Sick of losing soulmates (Cheryl Blossom & Toni Topaz)

16

Pop's is bursting with activity and Toni immediately notices Cheryl's discomfort. She's good like that.

"Do you wanna go somewhere else?" Toni asks, gently. She's like that around Cheryl and Cheryl only, she's noticed. She literally saw Toni sock Sweet Pea for stealing a french fry off of her plate once and, this other time, she shoved Jughead against the side of Fogarty's truck because he'd made a ridiculous face at her.

"There's nowhere else. Let's just– the bar is fine."

Toni leads the way, helping Cheryl onto the stool like a true gentle-woman before clambering onto her own. Truth be told, Cheryl isn't really hungry. A combination of the fight with her mother and the movie both made her stomach ache. Everything is just — it feels like everything is piling on top of her and she might just burst wide open.

So — Toni orders a whole meal and slides her basket of fries between both of them. There's also milkshakes and Cheryl takes sips of it to gather herself because she feels like a wreck. Toni lets her be for a while, but, again, there's only so much silence a talkative girl such as Toni can handle. Cheryl hopes for some small talk, some did you like the movie and is the strawberry milkshake any good because she's pretty sure that if Toni asks the right set of questions she might just burst. Burst wide open and everything will rush out of her, all the secrets and pain and heartbreaks, and it'll never stop.

"You might think you mastered the art of silent tears but I saw you crying during that movie," Toni plucks a fry, bites into it, "and there's still the question of why you were so desperate to get away from home."

Cheryl takes in a shaky breath because wow, she hasn't actually talked about her feelings out loud in forever. She's going to cry. It's inevitable.

This whole thing was inevitable, honestly — Cheryl and Toni. Cheryl and Toni sitting at Pop's. Cheryl and Toni at the library and at the movies and at the bar. Maybe in another life they would've met at the movie theatre after watching Love, Simon or maybe they would've been lab partners in chemistry or maybe — and Cheryl wishes it'd gone like this — they could've met at the age of seven, when nothing was terrible and Cheryl was happy. It would've been at a park, probably, and they would be fighting over the last open swing in the jungle gym.

That's how the universe works, Cheryl realizes. Your soulmate is your soulmate and the universe works its ass off to make you two meet because they're going to be absolutely necessary in this crazy, fucked up life. It's like the universe was saying that yes, terrifying things will happen and there will be moments when you think you can't go on, but your soulmate will be there. And, like Jason said all those years ago, soulmates will take care of each other, protect each other, love one another. Always. And who is Cheryl to fight back against the universe's wishes? No one. She's absolutely no one.

So. Cheryl tells her everything, from the very beginning. She tells Toni about being Jason's soulmate but it being unreciprocated, about finding her own tattoo and how her mother refused to ever talk about it; how Blossoms don't really believe in soulmates and love, how she'd met several people with her soulmate's name, about Heather, even. Cheryl is crying at this point and she could give less of a shit about her makeup because this is momentous — her coming out. She'd only ever done it once before, with Jason, and it had been so easy. It's even easier with Toni, she finds. Everything is easier with her. Even talking about how absolutely terrible her mother is and how her dad is always out on business trips and all the bad things her mother's told her, all the shitty things her mother's said about gay people –

"Cheryl," Toni says after Cheryl's been quiet for a second, "look at me, please. I... I need you to know that your mother is wrong..."

"About what?" Cheryl scoffs, turning to her milkshake but — but then Toni's hand is on top of hers and the breath is stolen from her lungs. Teary-eyed, she looks down at their hands and then up at Toni, eyebrows raised.

"About everything," Toni squeezes her hand, "she's wrong about you — you're  not loveless, or worthless, or stupid or bratty. You're amazing, Cheryl. Sensational. No matter what's happened in the past or who's hurt you or left you — you deserve to be happy. You deserve your own happy love story — you deserve your soulmate."

Toni is telling her all this with so much conviction that, in that moment, Cheryl believes her. And then, as an afterthought, almost, Toni adds–

"Fuck your mom."

So. She laughs. Cheryl's still got tears streaming down her face, streaks of black from her expensive mascara, but now she's laughing and Toni's entwining their fingers and, honestly, she's never felt as comfortable and loved as she does in this moment.